And Dissenter

Abstract

During the eighteenth century Ulster was seen as the heart of linen manufacture, and linen counted for three quarters of Ireland’s exports, provisions for only one quarter. Yet Belfast remained a small port, its population in 1750 only half the size of Cork’s in 1705. While it was bigger than its northern rivals, Derry and Newry the possibility that it would be surpassed by Newry, the first Irish port to construct a canal cutting deep into the countryside, seemed a distinct possibility to contemporaries. All three ports played a modest role in the linen trade for the existence of quality control and credit facilities in Dublin made it the fulcrum of linen sales. Heavily loaded wagons set out from a series of market towns within a 30 mile radius of Belfast, to trundle the 70 or 80 miles south to the capital, where the streets leading to the Linen Hall bore their names, Lurgan, Lisburn, Benburb. As a port, for the greater part of the eighteenth century, Belfast’s export trade was dominated by provisions. In 1759 the merchants held a meeting to discuss how they could improve their processing in order to emulate Cork standards. Until Britain was fully opened to provisions, ships from Belfast often carried their supplies to Cork for the Atlantic voyage, and beyond that date, in the early seventies, Richard Hare’s letter-book shows that he was still working with many of Belfast’s provision merchants, Henderson, Holmes, Ewing, Galan, Thompson, Greg and Cunningham.¹